Friday, January 31, 2025

Zoster - "Waxen Face" [1991]

Artist: Zoster
Title: Waxen Face
Genre: Old School Death Metal/Grindcore
Country: USSR
Release date: 1991

Track List:

  1. Intro
  2. Fantastic Epilepsy
  3. Vomit
  4. Cursed
  5. Inquiries
  6. Lethargic Sleep
  7. In the Deepest Ooze
  8. Zoster
  9. Slaves of Libido
  10. Friable Brain
  11. Interpretation of Schizophrenia
  12. Irretrievable Emotions of Pseudoyouth
  13. What For?
  14. Beg to Die
  15. Waxen Face
  16. Dumb Show
  17. Timbre of Silence
  18. Losing Coordination
  19. Logical Sequel of Absurdity
  20. Logical Sequel of Absurdity (First Version)

I've started this year with Ingush post-punk, and let's continue with a band from a neighbouring region of North Ossetia. Turned out there's a pretty big rock scene compared to other places in the North Caucasus, which is not particularly surprising - when I visited Vladikavkaz in 2023, it left an impression of a much less conservative and more hipster-ish city than anything I've seen in surrounding Muslim regions, and while I've seen a lot Christian iconography, the actual beliefs of people were more pagan than anything else (say, like in the neighbouring Georgia, there's a cult of St. George, but rather as a pagan god of war than a Christian saint). And if there was death metal in Dagestan in 1996 and Armenia in 1994, it could be in North Ossetia in 1991 too.

This particular band suprised me by being one of the first to play deathgrind in the USSR, when it was very rare even in the much bigger and cosmopolitan cities like Moscow and Leningrad. They started in 1988 as a project of the members of a hard'n'heavy band Исповеди and thrash metal band Orgy, and released their only tape album in 1991. While I expected a really poor quality of production before listening to it, it turned out to be a lot better than I thought, and the music itself is a lot more interested and varied than what you'd hear on a typical grindcore demo from the 90s. Unfortunately, it was released right before "Nevermind" by Nirvana came out, so next year they had to switch their style to grunge because no one was interested in their metal stuff anymore. Not much is known about their futher history except that they've finally split up in 1996 (yes, that was a tough time for everyone and for metal bands in particular), and their vocalist died in September 2001. If I'm not mistaken, no one in the band was ethnic Ossetian, everyone in the lineup had Russian and Armenian names.

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Guess who's back?

So, after 4 years of inactivity, I decided to bring this blog back to life.

Those years were pretty turbulent, and I don't have much time to post as often as I used to do, but I still have interesting musical discoveries to share with you and hope to do it at least once in a month or two. And let's start with a music video by January Blues, the first band to play post-punk with lyrics in Ingush language (may I call it "Ingush Doomer Music"?)